Show Me by Carole Hart Page B

didn’t ever feel at home in it the way you did. I still don’t know why you quit.”
    “Just don’t want to be a middle-aged porn star. Call it vanity. I don’t want to have a Fat Elvis phase.”
    “You’re thirty-five. I mean—”
    “Oh, well. It’s kind of a moot point, since I have to come out of retirement, anyhow.”
    “Oh, right. Thanks to Valerie.”
    “Can’t be a sex symbol if everyone thinks I’m impotent. God, how I hate that woman.” He looked unhappily at the mirror beside the piano, in which they were reflected, lying facing each other at either end of Emily’s shocking pink sofa. Jared was wearing running pants and an undershirt; Emily was still in the purple silk pajamas she’d been wearing when she answered the door to let him in. But even lounging there in their Sunday worst, they looked to Emily now like characters in a porn scenario—the man who dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar, possibly. The girl who was “so lonely,” bending over to show him her cleavage. High jinks ensuing, ending in some tangle in front of the mirror, which would turn out to be a two-way mirror, et cetera. Often scenes from everyday life struck her this way nowadays. She would have helpless fits of blushing in the midst of asking for a home improvement loan, shaking hands with her personal trainer, seeing her doctor. The boundary between life and sex had become paper-thin for her, which could be cheering or unsettling, depending on her mood.
    Now Jared put out his hand, and Emily frowned at the mirrored hand for a moment before getting it. Then she turned to pass the ice cream into his real hand.
    “Why don’t you come on my show?” Emily said. “We can talk about how horrible she is and—well, have one for old time’s sake.” The idea appealed to her. For one thing, it would be easier than sleeping with another in the line of random celebs and celebrity wannabes. Her job had become a serial stress bomb since her afternoon with Ralph. She still didn’t know why he couldn’t see her again, but she was certain that it had something to do with the stigma attached to her job.
    But sleeping with Jared couldn’t be exactly stressful, not after all these years. When she’d first gotten her job at XTV, he’d been her instant best friend. He’d also been her part-time lover. Nowadays, looking back, she remembered the feeling she’d had then that sexuality could be based on a heady mix of affection and the senses, without the burdening needs and hopes of “true love,” and she wondered if it hadn’t all been based on her relationship with Jared Vairy. He had been her fun and her comfort for years, without ever being a real love interest—she wasn’t sure why. Sometimes they joked that when they were old, they would marry each other, “and become campaigners against porn,” Jared always added. “I want to be a famous hypocrite someday.” But it was just a joke. One of the special things about their friendship was that they could cheer each other through their relationships, be a shoulder to cry on when the relationships failed, and then have porn-quality sex to forget their worries.
    “Well, I wish,” Jared said now. “But Babylona has her heart set on using me in her birthday special.”
    “Oh, no! That fucking birthday!”
    Both of them started laughing. Emily said, “What charity are we aiding now? Has Greenpeace agreed to take our tainted dollars?”
    “Oh, no. It’s some charity for the poor in the Third World. I forget which one. The open-minded one, anyway.” Jared mimed holding a microphone and said, in his best TV presenter voice, “Now, we see on the chart that the erection is only at half-mast! We need to raise another five hundred thousand dollars by midnight to get this baby good and hard! And while you phone in your contributions, let’s see Jujubee Connor fucking three men on a roller coaster!”
    “Erection?” Emily frowned.
    “You know. Instead of a